Spurred by being alive in this historical moment when the forces of individualism and separation are strong and naturalized, my research focuses on the sources, processes, and effects of collective political action and inaction. I am particularly interested in the affective incitements and blockages to activism.

My current project traverses numerous instances of collective political (in)action with an eye toward political appetite and a more familiar political withdrawal. What generates senses of political possibility and what provokes contrary feelings of political inefficacy, cynicism, and despair? In times like now when standard characterizations of human beings as self-interested utility maximizers are particularly inadequate, and when contrary suspicions about the ostensibly irrational masses being unfit for democracy have gained renewed traction, we need intensive exploration of the visceral, nonconscious, more-than-rational, sometimes contradictory and noncoherent dimensions of political motivation and behavior. I draw from literatures that infrequently consort with one another—affect studies, social movement studies, and political theory—to explore the intertwining of political emotion and reason in a manner that unravels that hard-to-shake binary.